


Conflict Resolution

by paeanrela



Series: The Principle of Causation [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Complicated Relationships, Kidnapping, M/M, slow-build
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-07
Updated: 2016-07-14
Packaged: 2018-07-22 02:48:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7416604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paeanrela/pseuds/paeanrela
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony finally makes the call.</p>
<p>His timing could have been better.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A continuation of _Action, Action: Reaction_. Reading that first isn't really necessary in order to understand this but why the hell not, right?
> 
> This fic is basically a product of my becoming increasingly frustrated with the tags I've been seeing following CA:CW. Take that for what you will. It also ain't proof read and it's 3:30 in the morning so haha, whoops.

When Tony calls it is at the worst possible moment. Probably. If Steve tries he can probably come up with something worse, tries to imagine Tony calling just as he was finally, finally able to wake Bucky up, considers for a moment how that would have felt, to once again choose Bucky over Tony. He wouldn't have hesitated, of course not, but the timing would have been bad enough to make him cringe to even think of it.

This is at least a pretty close second, he concedes, and then ducks behind the massive bulk of a fallen tree just as a spray of bullets peppers the night air with a deafening report. They rip through the thick wood like paper and that none catch him is more due to luck than any particular skill on his part. A more concentrated assault would not have allowed such a near escape it and he needs to shake his pursuers, make contact with T'Challa, warn the team that they are compromised. With some hope whoever it is shooting at him is only aware of his current position and remain oblivious of where the others are. 

Through the chaos of his current situation the little flip phone in his pocket continues to innocently ring.

Steve's lips purse into a thin bloodless line and his teeth dig briefly into the flesh of his lower lip before he darts to his left, throwing himself into the thick foliage of the jungle and fumbling for the phone in his pocket. 

Almost immediately after there is a hail of bullets that turn the surface of the tree where he'd been leaning into mulch. In the wake of this he's pretty impressed by how calm he sounds when he answers, exhaling sharply. 

“Hi Tony.”

He is aiming for affected nonchalance. He's not entirely sure he manages it, given the circumstances.

“Rogers,” Tony's tinny voice retorts and Steve winces at how distant he sounds, thousands of miles away and so cold. He nearly trips over a twisting root and overcompensates when jumping away, slamming himself into an outcropping of rock. He grunts but doesn't let it slow him down. 

“Where the hell are you!” Tony's voice is instantly warmer, colored with sudden concern and Steve has to smile humorlessly. Tony and his walls. It seems he still cared after all. He'd probably been intending to keep his tone as lofty as possible for the duration of the call but hadn't expected Steve's less than ideal situation. In fact, he'd probably heard the gunfire, it's loud enough as he tries to put some distance between he and it, and something in him warms knowing that Tony still obviously cares. 

He feels a little guilty for even considering otherwise. He knows Tony cares and he cares a hell of a lot. Things have gone wrong between them and he wants to fix it, he does, but he wishes that Tony hadn't called now, of all times. He's just robbed Tony of any shield he might have had coming into this conversation, by forcing him to show his cards and reveal that he's not as unaffected by hearing Steve's voice as he'd maybe like to be. 

“Uhhm, the jungle." He ducks under a low hanging branch, heavy with some sort of speckled fruit, right before it smacks him in the face, and slides down a short slope thick with waxy leafed greenery, and pushes himself immediately into a weaving run. "Where are you?” He rolls, and jumps to the side just as the viciously mechanical sound of some terribly powerful vehicle comes tearing up behind him, ripping through the jungle foliage like it's nothing and bringing with it an unfortunate number of men dressed for an impressive tactical assault. They are armed with a frankly alarming number of guns. 

Steve wishes he had his shield.

“My _office_ , where the hell else do you think I'd be? Is someone shooting at you?!” Tony barks and oh, he sounds upset and Steve supposes he can understand that. They hadn't parted on good terms, he knows that, but he sometimes needs to remind himself that Tony doesn't actually wish him dead.

Even if it had felt that way in the cold concrete compound of Siberia.

But now really wasn't the time to be thinking about those things. Steve shakes himself out of it and focuses instead on shaking his tail. 

“I've gotta put you on hold for just a second, Tony,” Steve confesses. “Don't hang up, I'm glad you called.” And then he silences his end from Tony's ears, ignoring the furious cut off objection and grips the phone tight, committing himself to getting himself the fuck out of this situation so that he and Tony can finally, finally talk. 

Unfortunately he isn't in the position to reconnect the call any time soon.

 

Tony listens to the crushing silence of the phone with something like panic perched on his back, making his hands shake. He's furious and wants to break something and he's going to give Rogers a piece of his fucking mind when he reconnects the call, that asshole, that fucking piece of shit, what the fuck had he been thinking, trying to call him in the first place? What had Rogers said in his fucking letter? Call him if he ever needed him? Well, he was in fucking need of him and what the hell good was it if Steve just put him on hold and left him to anxiously worry into the black pit of silence that stretched between them, connected over this archaically ugly little flip phone and still so far apart all because Steve hadn't let him say what he needed to say.

God, that had been gunfire.

The _jungle,_ he'd said. What an asshole. Tony gripped the phone tighter and willed Steve's voice to burst across the speaker again, tell him that he had narrowly escaped whatever bullshit situation he had gotten himself into but was okay now, was ready to listen to Tony. 

It occurred to Tony then that Steve didn't have his shield. His shield was in Tony's workshop, locked down behind countless security codes, safe from the grabby hands of the American government, and frequently gazed at with what Tony refused to admit was longing. Guilt he could confess too, he and guilt were longtime friends, but longing was another animal altogether and fuck it if he was going to walk down that particular masochistic path of self-inflicted heartache.

_Pick up the fucking phone, Steve!_

Tony closed his eyes, leaning back in his chair and struggled to control his breathing. Unbelievable, that's what this was. What fucked up God was laughing at him right now? What joke was he the butt of? He was very aware of his own ability to piss off a truly impressive number of people but this seemed excessive. This seemed cosmically cruel. 

_Please pick up the phone._

The silence on the other end slowly takes on a deafening quality that stretches into something worse when hours later the battery dies, and the call ends itself.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so it continues. Please note that I don't actually have _any idea_ where this is going. How exciting for us all.
> 
> As before this is not beta read and all mistakes are my own. Enjoy!

Steve wakes up with a needle in his arm, which is attached to a thin tube that is intravenously feeding him something that makes him feel like he is wading through mud, viscous and filthy. He can't see it, can't smell it, but he knows it's filthy, knows there's gore in the muck here with him because he's been here before, down in the trenches where so many men have died with no hope to hold onto, the sound of shells whistling around him like a woman's sustained scream, it's impact a deafening boom nearby that sends a spray of muddied debris; dirt, blood, heat washing over him like a feverish illness and he's in bed, stuck there, he can barely move and maybe this time it'll kill him, maybe this time he'll die coughing up a lung, too weak to catch his breath until he's eyes go glassy and Buck will be left to plan the funeral. 

Oh, he'll hate him for that, probably send him into the ground with all sorts of profanity to keep him warm in the ground and Bucky always said -- where is Bucky? 

Still frozen. Frozen _again_ , because that's what he'd wanted, damn him, wanted to close his eyes and forget what Hydra had made him do, but he'd left Steve behind again and he couldn't blame him, couldn't be mad, but God, he is. He's got no right, but he is, and he's got Tony's voice in his ear, vitriol impatience-- What the hell had he been saying to Tony? 

He'd been so glad he'd called, thought maybe there was some hope in salvaging what was left of their friendship, especially if Tony was big enough to make the call. Or maybe he'd been calling because he needed his help with something, maybe he needed _Captain America,_ and hadn't wanted to talk to Steve at all. _God's righteous man_ , standing stalwart with only his goddamned stubbornness and his shield, the shield Howard Stark had built, stronger than any home he'd managed to make for himself. That house of cards had been toppled by Howard, or Hydra, or maybe the ghost of Steve or hell, maybe all of them were to blame and Tony was just some poor kid caught in the middle until he'd grown into a man who'd engineered invisible walls around himself with such seamless precision that Steve hadn't even been aware he'd slipped past them until they were facing off against one another and he suddenly realized how much this was going to hurt them both.

Tony's voice in his ear; had they fought again? God, he hoped they hadn't fought--

There is a needle in Steves's arm and he can't see straight, can't sort his muddied thoughts into something coherent and he knows this is wrong, that he's gotten himself into a situation that he needs to get the hell out of and quick, but this kinda feels a little like being drunk. He hasn't been drunk in a long time, and he remembers dance halls and music, wants to find the right partner but she's dead and everything is wrong with so many things goddamn things.

Peggy's face swims in front of him before it melts garishly into Sharon's, he can hear Howard laughing and talking about fondue, _just cheese and bread, my friend_ , Tony is sneering at him, and laughing and clapping him on the shoulder, and making endless biting jokes and merrily tutting at Steve, _for gosh sake, watch your language!_ and neither of them are _worthy._

It'd be easier to just close his eyes again, go back to sleep. Take a page from Bucky's book and shut it all out for awhile, but that's not fair, Bucky's pages are soaked in red and Steve's got no real excuse to run. 

His hands clench into fists at his side and he resists the tempting undertow of lethargy, readying himself to push himself up. Keep fighting, always keep fighting. If you run away now you'll never stop-- 

There is a hand on his shoulder, a needle in his neck. Steve closes his eyes and effortlessly slips into the deep dreamless dark. 

 

 

It takes Tony Stark just under 8 hours to arrive in Wakanda, where he is then immediately greeted with chilly hostility by a small group of capable looking people. His unannounced arrival does not seem to be a welcome one, though he does notice that no one seems particularly surprised by his abrupt appearance. 

T'Challa, he notes with some irritation, is no where to be found. Hiding the unmentionables from sight, he guesses bitterly. He wonders if he's stuffing Barnes in the closet now, as he stands in stiff silence with Wakandans who aren't even attempting small talk. In fact, they are shockingly bad hosts, he thinks uncharitably. Wasn't Wakanda supposed to favor the Accords? Hadn't they more or less spearheaded them in their call for greater oversight? He'd been on their side, after all. You wouldn't know it by the stony silence and condescending refusal to look at him as they escorted him to a sleekly decorated room, all smooth lines and sleek modernity. One wall was entirely made of windows, overlooking the vast jungle that surrounded the Wakandan seat of royalty.

The jungle. Tony's teeth clenched and he sucked in a sharp breath before clapping his hands once and turning in his escort.

“Not that the chat here hasn't just been absolutely stimulating but I should have opened with 'take me to your leader.' Times wasting and I'm not here to do any bird watching.”

Some kind of parrot coasts past the windows immediately after, the red and blue of its tail feathers streaming behind like a patriotic banner against the white of distant clouds, and Tony's eyes narrow suspiciously at the timing.

It's also then that the double doors on the opposite end of the room open and in walks King T'Challa, all cool feline grace (pun intended) with Sam Wilson so close at his side he's practically perched on his shoulder (pun _also_ intended). 

Okay, so maybe the bird watching isn't totally off the table.

Tony feels a flash of guilt that he smothers with brutal efficiency at the sight of Sam and tips his chin up in challenge.

“No time for pleasantries, gentlemen, but I'm looking for a disgraced national icon who hasn't got a single ounce of respect for phone etiquette. Seen him anywhere? I've got a bone or two to pick with him.” The silent group of people who had lead him here have silently slipped out and it was just the three of them. 

And by Wilson's expression Tony wasn't going to be able to talk to Steve in the foreseeable future. Or probably much like what he was about to hear.

“The Captain is missing, we are presently doing all we can to locate him,” T'Challa replied, his accented voice all soft authority, as if this will discourage Tony from assaulting him with about a million questions. 

Sam got there first.

“What'd you do, Stark? Figure out a way to track the phone he sent you?” he sneered. “What took you so long to show up, huh?” There was open hostility in Wilson's voice and Tony couldn't say he blamed him; the last time they'd spoken they'd been on separate sides of the glass, Sam locked up on a monolithic prison raft and telling Tony where Steve was with the promise that he'd go as a friend.

And that had turned out _so_ well.

Fortunately, Tony had no time for this and thus didn't waste time dwelling on the guilt.

“As if I needed to,” he retorted. “Thank Barton for being so weirdly sentimental about his arrows, I've had a tracker on them since I started designing half of 'em, no reason to use it until recently. Lucky me he couldn't leave the Raft without them." He paused. "On second thought, keep that between us. I really don't need to give him another reason to stick one of them in me.” 

They were wasting time. He was wasting time. He'd come here for a reason.

“If you don't know where Steve is then what do you know?” 

Sam's expression was tight and he didn't reply immediately. He looked tired. He was worried, Tony realized, and T'Challa's expression of was of complete control, a mask of diplomatic placidity. The one holding it together at the funeral for the sake of everyone around him. 

Tony felt a chill run down his spine.

He was really getting sick of all the bad news in his life.

Though one might think he should be used to it by now. He'd make a joke about it but later; after they got Steve back from wherever he was, hale and hardy and ready for Tony to yell at him until he was hoarse, and if he was feeling nice maybe he'd even apologize for trying to kill Steve's best friend, and Steve would apologize, in _person_ , for keeping awful traumatic secrets, and they could got back to the way things had been before.

_Right._

This was assuming one pretty big thing.

“Is he still alive?” he asked and his voice was quieter than he'd intended it to be. He was big enough to admit that he was afraid of the answer.

T'Challa exhaled slowly and inclined his head in a short nod. “There is nothing to indicate that he is not, though the evidence from the sight in which he was taken does not demonstrate his attackers were overly invested him taking him uninjured. The rounds they used were live, and powerful. There was a fatal amount of blood, but only a small portion has been identified as belonging to Captain Rogers. The rest lacked a body to match it to. I can only conclude that the ones responsible for this attack would have taken any bodies with them to avoid the chance of possible identification and subsequent censure, as any foreign attack and illegal seizure of Captain Rogers on Wakandan soil would doubtlessly lead to an international event.”

_I would make sure of it_ , went unsaid.

Tony pinched the bridge of his nose, closing his eyes and replaying Steve's words in his head.

_I'm glad you called. I'm glad you called. Don't hang up, I'm glad you called._

He really hated politics. What had he been thinking, believing this would make anything easier? Safer? 

Unbidden he thought of the mother who blamed him for her son's death.

_God._

If Steve had just _worked_ with him... Had that really been too much to ask?

But the addition to Bucky fucking Barnes to the mix had just screwed everything up so perfectly.

“Can I assume Barnes is off tearing after his BFF? Surely the Winter Soldier can track down Captain America, right? Isn't that, like, his specialty?” He waved a careless hand and couldn't hide how he was suddenly consumed with bitterness, his voice taking on an ugly edge. “Hey, if we make that his mission he's sure to succeed. Solved it! Because that's what he _does,_ right? Hunts people down to the end of the earth? I mean, sure, it usually ends in cold-blooded murder but we'll just belay the kill order and everything will be fine and dandy. Did you replace his arm yet? Don't tell me you wouldn't be able too, I've seen your fancy suit, King Cat, and if Hydra can give him a terminator arm you probably had no problem.” The longer he talked the louder he got, until he was sneering those last words with furious anger banked behind the acidity of his words and he isn't totally expecting it when Wilson suddenly shoves him back and pins him to a smudge-less surface of a glass window, but also can't say he's totally surprised.

“You promised to go as a friend, Stark! Remember that? You promised me that, and if I'd known your word really was as good as worthless I'd never have told you where they were. Why the hell are you here, man?” He shoved himself back, releasing Tony with a scowl. “Go the fuck home and let us deal with it! He's better off without your help.” He spun on his heel, marching out of the room with his shoulders tense, fists tights at his side. 

Tony watched his go, momentarily speechless.

T'Challa only sighed, his eyes slipping closed for a moment as he visibly gathered himself. When he opened them again he observed Tony with a sort of remote sympathy. 

"Mr. Barnes is not currently in the position to help Captain Rogers and he will remain that way, as the stipulations to alter his state have not yet been reached, per his request. I warn you now that if you make any attempt to finish what you started in Siberia I will stop you, and you will be forbidden from ever again returning to my country.” His tone was not unkind but carried a hard edge, like that of a man who did not expect to be argued with, and indeed, warned against it. His expression softened a moment later and he watched Tony carefully. “However, if you are more interested in helping find and retrieve Captain Rogers, as I suspect you to be, I will welcome your help and share with you all that I have at my disposal.” 

Tony was silent, eyes still on the doors where Sam had vanished. T'Challa continued.

“I will be frank with you, Mr. Stark. I confess that I am not confident of Captain Rogers' chances. I do not think he is yet dead, but that is not to say that he will not soon be. There has been no announcement of Captain Rogers detainment and his trail is going cold very fast. The men who have taken him do not wish anyone to follow, and they do not strike me as being in league with your General Ross, who I believe would capitalize publicly on such a catch. Their methods are brutal, and disturbingly efficient, which forgive me for saying, does not ring so true of the General.”

Tony looked at T'Challa and made no objection to the assessment. Ross was an arrogant dick, that much was pretty much a given, and his methods were ham-fisted and often fumbling. While Tony wasn't entirely confident that it wasn't unlike Ross to throw a bunch of senseless firepower at a problem, it was the finesse required to outmaneuver a natural tactician like Steve that he doubted.

Unbidden a memory rose up, bubbling up like bile in the back of his throat. 

Steve's shield, impossibly broken, and the man himself staring up at him with vacant accusing eyes. 

“Right,” he said faintly and cleared his throat. “Right. Okay. Then let's get started. What do you know, and what can I do to help?” 

T'Challa, to his credit, transitioned smoothly from keeping Tony at a wary arms length to bringing him into closer confidence, and he ushered for him to fall into step as he turned to pass through the same doors Wilson had stormed through minutes before. 

Beyond was a hallway that continued to host the wall of windows, allowing their traversal through the building to be bathed in pleasing natural light.

"We were first alerted to something being amiss when gunfire was reported in the northwest region of the jungle, just over 80 kilometers from here. Captain Rogers had expressed an interest in exploring more of the natural beauties of my homeland, and I made my suggestions to where he might enjoy a few hours to himself. I suspected he might have been growing somewhat anxious with the time he had been spending inside, with matters being as they are with his friend." T'Challa glanced at Tony, who was gradually developing a grim curiosity about where exactly Barnes was. 

It didn't look like T'Challa was about to tell him just yet, if he ever would. 

"He would have left my country already, I suspect. He is a man not prone to staying still, but the whole world would like to know where Captain America is and leaving now was thought to be too great a risk." 

T'Challa smiled tightly.

"It seems staying was perhaps the poorer choice." 

Ohhhh, Tony so totally did not envy the people who would have to face this guy when he found them. He didn't think they'd be dealing with a very happy King of the Jungle. Not when they'd personally offended the official protector of Wakanda. 

That is, if Tony didn't get to them first.


End file.
